8 Ways to Sunday

I’m new to the blog craze, but in its first two weeks this site has gotten 572 hits and 146 unique visitors (as of early this morning, according to server logs). That’s 44 hits per day, much better than personal web sites I’ve had in the past, and the numbers seem to keep improving. Doing some reading on the ExtremeTech forum topic “Do you have your own blog?” I saw a handful of people complaining that their blogs don’t get any traffic, or wondering how many people take the time to actually read blogs. Unqualified though I may be, I decided to offer up some suggestions, observations, and tips for writing an attention-getting blog.

Let me first say that while I am new at this, I have an obsessive-compulsive streak in my personality that demands I “do my homework” on any new project or hobby. Before I started this blog, and as I’ve continued to build it, I’ve searched and read extensively online to find information about blogging tools, directories, and best practices in the blogging community. Being a big believer in learning by example,
I’ve also started reading blogs and am beginning to get a taste for RSS to help me keep up with my reading. Okay, now that I’ve established my marginal credibility, let’s jump in.

In my investigations of various blogging tools, the one I was most impressed with was Movable Type. One of the more mature blogging products available, it’s full of great features and is easy to use once you get through the chore of setting it up. Plus, unlike some of the newer blogging tools that can compete with MT on features (pMachine, Radio Userland, et al), it’s free for personal use. On the hit-mongering front, MT has some nice automatic features. With each update you post, it pings weblogs.com and blo.gs, adding you to a list of recently updated sites that’s searchable by anyone. It also automatically generates an RSS feed that people can either subscribe to or search (if you submit your feed address to Feedster).

I can state from experience that setting up Movable Type is not a task for the computer novice. I’ve been using computers since third grade (I’m now 26), and it still took me about four hours to get working the first time. If you don’t want to spend the time and trouble, I strongly recommend BloggedUp as a host for your blog. I use them, and they’re great. Their standard plan is $35/year (less than $3/month!) and comes with 50MB of disc space, 5 e-mail addresses, and a 2GB/month bandwidth allotment. There’s no extra setup fee, and they’ll install any blogging tool they support (and that’s several) on your account free of charge. And no, I don’t work for them, I just love their service! My last host (Webhost4life) was horrible, and I’m still haggling with them to get my promised refund. Take my advice — if you go with a solution like Movable Type that needs to be hosted on your own account, check out your hosting prospects thoroughly. It’s worth the time to wade through customer service phone menus (”press five to stay on hold until you feel like slitting your wrists…”) rather than wind up with a $79 charge on your credit card that your former provider seems reluctant to give back.

If you don’t want to switch blogging tools or are stuck using a free service for now (having been a poor college not that long ago I can sympathize), I recommend submitting your posts to your blog with w.bloggar. It’s a Windows program that can post to several different kinds of blogs and it will also send out update pings for you similar to MT. For a free
RSS feed on blogs that don’t support it automatically, you can go to BlogMatrix, which offers a service to generate RSS for you.

Other tools like BlogRolling and blogLinker encourage reciprocal linking between you and other blogs — blogLinker even requires it! You should also be sure to submit your blog to specialized directories and trackers like BlogWise, Globe of Blogs, Blogdex, Popdex, etc. And no matter what blog tools you use, be sure to submit your site to mainstream search engines like AltaVista, Yahoo, MSN, and of course Google

Lastly, and most importantly, is the writing itself. Write about things that matter to you and that you think will be of interest to other like-minded people on the net. It helps to write pithy headlines and tight body copy; the former will attract people to read your site, and the latter will keep them coming back for more. There are several tips on writing a good blog in this article on A List Apart. Rebecca Blood, one of the early bloggers, has written a
book about blogging that may be helpful. Her website contains an
excerpt about blogging ethics.

I hope these links and tips are helpful to some of the other newbies (and frustrated not-so-newbies) out there. I like to think that my near-OCD can be a benefit to others, after all.

How about the rest of you out in the blogosphere? Any helpful hints on getting more traffic and writing a better blog?

[Listening to: Jenny (867-5309) - Blink 182 (03:29)]